14 DAY TRIAL // Touch technology has definitely been evolving and it seems that combining it with other display assets has become easy enough that a screen large enough to need 3 computers to run was made with technologies generally available to display makers.
Touch technology has started to show up on any and all sorts of devices, especially now that tablets have kicked off for real.
Capacitive and resistive multi-touch are the most widespread and easy to implement, especially on regular or small screens.
Larger displays with such technology, like monitors or TVs, are a bit harder to come by.
Still, this did not stop the researchers from the University of Groningen from creating a really massive curved display.
With a width of 33 feet, the display actually needs three full computers to run properly and has a native resolution of 4,900 x 1,700 pixels.
Another interesting fact about it is that it uses an intricate array of cameras and IR emitters to justify touch input.
To be more specific, there are 6 cameras and 16 infrared emitters, all of them handled by the aforementioned 3 systems and running a specially-written software, which is really the only 'new' feature it has.
The result is a panel capable of keeping track of up to 100 simultaneous touch points, leading to a high level of interactivity.
Granted, 100 touch points may seem a bit overkill, but it is all the more impressive considering that only off the shelf technologies were used instead of some new invention or proprietary feature.
Those consumers that would like to see for themselves just what the large screen can do need only check out the video embedded below.
What remains to be seen is if this product concept, or similar ones, ever end up actually being used in real life applications and, if yes, how long it will take.